Disclaimer: This review contains spoilers. 

Welcome back to my reading corner and to another instalment of my reviews for the Manbooker long list, four of the books I reserved at the library came in so look forward to reviews for The Long Take, In Our Mad and Furious City, and Washington Black coming soon.

I rated this book 4 stars on Goodreads after completion, it was honestly a fantastic and engrossing read that I finished in one sitting. The story follows the kidnapping and murder of the young woman Sabrina Gallo told by the experiences of the people who surrounded her when she was alive. On one hand we have her family’s experience personified by her sister, Sandra, who doesn’t feature too prominently in the novel but we can see from the glimpses we get of her the intense pain and suffering that is brought upon her and her family from this random act of cruelty. We also see the pain and suffering brought to her boyfriend, Teddy, and his friend Calvin who kindly opens his house to him as a safe place to stay while Calvin battles his own demons: namely divorce.

The artwork in this book was simplistic but I didn’t feel like anything was left out despite the simplicity of the images and the characters. I enjoyed the muted palette for the colour scheme of the art. The artwork is very reminiscent of The King of the Hill in terms of the line work; there was also a nice almost gender neutrality to most of the characters in the novel, the female characters weren’t stereotypically ‘feminine’ or drawn with ridiculous, unrealistic features. I don’t typically read graphic novels but I found this to be very accessible despite the fact that I have little to no experience with the genre. This was so easy to read that I read it within a couple of hours in the one sitting without feeling short changed at all by what the pages contained. The book itself is only 203 pages long but it is a HUGE book with a hardcover so it’s not ideal for transportation, it’s definitely a book to keep at home. Due to the fact it’s a fairly impractical book, I’m glad I could easily finish it within the one sitting as I constantly have a book on hand and I don’t enjoy reading multiple books at once.

It is made clear fairly soon into the book who Sabrina’s killer is and how she died, this is not the focus for Drnaso, Sabrina’s story is merely a vehicle to drive home a more poignant and, at times, horrifying element of 21st century reporting and conspiracy theories. Teddy comes across a podcast where the host discusses the shadow government, crisis actors, and doomsday. As a reader, it is clear to see how readily Teddy is drawn into this rhetoric put forth by the presenter. How he preys on Teddy’s every fears; and also confirms that life isn’t that bad. It is believed that conspiracy theories are construed as a way for us to process the horrors that happen every day, sometimes it’s easier for us to be in denial about what happened and it’s clear to see that Teddy is taking some form of comfort listening to the rants on his radio.

In an age of fake news, Drnaso portrays the mundanity and sensationalism of day to day news articles on Facebook and social media. He shows how human kind are feeding ourselves empty information as a way to entertain ourselves and escape from our workdays. It was with scary accuracy that Drnaso did a strip showing different headlines on a website to draw attention to how ridiculous the news in circulation on the internet can become.

Due to Calvin and Sandra being close to the victim of the crime they are both targeted by conspiracy theorists who decide to try to get the ‘truth’ out of them whatever the consequences, this leads to death threats and worse for both of the characters. This again highlights the dangers of the internet and the electronic age, how people can access your home address if they want to, they can find your e-mail address and use information against you to try to blackmail you.

The murderer, Timmy Yancey, is also an example of the internet not being a safe place. How he was clearly an at risk person for being radicalised in a sense by the conspiracy theorists he sought comfort in, how he was blocked from multiple discussion boards and nobody intervened to check in on him or help him. Sabrina also showed how disconnected people can become from true human horror when it is separated from them by a screen, we see this through the popularity of the video of Sabrina being murdered and even more so when Calvin decides to download it, despite the fact that he knows his friend would not want him to watch it.

The only reason this is not a 5 star read for me is because I felt there was something slightly lacking in the conclusion, I don’t know what would have brought it up to a 5 but there was something slightly confusing about the last couple of pages for me however there was a definitive conclusion for most of the characters which was nice to have that wrapped up.

Overall, I enjoyed this book and found it utterly compulsive. I think if you have never read a graphic novel before that you will enjoy this one and according to Goodreads this is a follow up from another novel Beverly so there is more content by this author/artist. I will definitely be keeping an eye out for more of his work, if not for more cartoon cats within his stories.

Do I think this will win the Manbooker prize? Probably not. Do I think it could get to the short list? Possibly. This is definitely one to look out for, I would recommend it to most readers. Despite the fact the novel is mostly centred around a character in the armed forces in America, I surprisingly didn’t find it as noxious as the idea of that plot device sounds.

Have you read Sabrina? What did you think of it? Let me know in the comments.

Keep reading,

– A